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A missed opportunity for diversity

Judging by emails from readers in America, Britain, India, Australia, Europe, Africa and beyond, Vancouver’s Olympic ceremony was a gold medal snoozeroo of politically correct braggadocio impressive even by Canadian standards. A Florida correspondent suggested that Beijing’s decision in 2008 to downplay discreetly its official state ideology might have been usefully emulated by Canadian organizers unable to go a minute and a half without reflexive invocations of their own state ideology of “diversity.” A reader in Sydney said he had no idea until the ceremony that the majority of Canada’s population were Aboriginal. Actually, if they were, you’d be hearing a lot less talk about “diversity,” for reasons we’ll come to later.

But don’t take the word of doubtless untypical Steyn readers. Out on the Internet, the Tweeting Twitterers pronounced it a bust, and even in the Toronto Star Richard Ouzounian declared that “the eyes of the world were upon us and we put them to sleep.” On the other hand, the Vancouver Sun’s reporter cooed that this was “the Canada we want the world to see, magical and beautiful, and talented.” This just after she’d written: “Maple leaves fell from the sky. And then, the divine poetess Joni Mitchell and her haunting Clouds fills the air while a young boy floats and soars above the audience, undulating fields of wheat below.” I was pleasantly relieved to discover that a story about “the world’s most lethal cocktail” concerned some enterprising dealers who’ve been lacing heroin with anthrax, and not whichever malevolent genius came up with the idea of having airborne ballet dancers doing interpretative choreography over the Prairies to a mélange of Both Sides Now and W. O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen The Wind. As is traditional, most of the creativity went into the audience estimates: apparently, this tribute to the only G7 nation comprised solely of high priests of the Great Tree Spirit, armies of Inuit sculptors, and Cape Breton chorus lines of federal grant worshippers was watched by three billion people “worldwide.” As if the Royal Canadian Mint could afford to commission that many commemorative authentic pewter maple-encrusted manacles.

Canada’s message to the world: every cliché you’ve heard about our plonkingly insecure self-flattering PC earnestness has been triumphantly confirmed. You need pay us no further heed until the 2068 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Half the countries, twice as long!

But, as it happens, if you chanced to be holed up in Vancouver for the duration, Canada is well worth paying attention to. The gulf between the self-mythologizing of the Olympics ceremony and its application on the ground was rarely more visible. For example, an overseas visitor to the Games, wearying of all the First Nations types prancing around the stadium and picking up a newspaper, would have surely been bewildered to have found reports of the self-same First Nations types giving 10-day eviction orders from the Kahnawake reserve to residents deemed to have insufficient “blood quantum” to pass the Mohawk racial-purity test. Apparently, most of the deportees are spouses or “partners” of full Mohawks.

To be honest, I was impressed to discover that there are actually people willing to move to native reserves. Truly, love conquers all. At least until the blood quantum theorists show up, and you find you’re living in some dystopian Nuremberg rewrite of Abie’s Irish Rose in which a sovereign jurisdiction of the Canadian state can break up your marriage on racial grounds.

And it’s perfectly legal!

Did I doze off and miss that at Vancouver? “And now dancing racists funded by Canadian tax dollars present an interpretative ballet symbolizing the great Canadian mosaic by performing racial purity tests on Donald Sutherland and k. d. lang, at the end of which they will be ceremonially cast out of the stadium while Michael Bublé and Nelly Furtado sing ‘Tell me when will you be mine/Tell me Quantum, Quantum, Quantum.’ ”

Whenever I write about immigration or Islam or multiculturalism or some such, there’s a little flurry of comments that I’m obsessed with racial purity. Hardly. My own “blood quantum” is hopelessly impure, so I’m in no position to start casting aspersions. Yet, if someone were to muse on the importance of, say, maintaining Anglo-Celtic blood quantum in the Maritimes, they’d be on a fast track to “human rights” hell—just for writing it. Because it’s incompatible with “Canadian values.” But if you don’t write it, if you just get on and do it, that’s entirely compatible with Canadian values—as long as you’re a First Nations guy.

And the Diversity Pansies haven’t a word to say about it.

That’s why the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a worthless piece of junk—because (at least according to the Supreme Court of Canada) it both licenses the Canadian state to restrain your basic liberties yet also exempts your (native) neighbour from those same restraints. Putting aside its other defects, no self-respecting citizen should take seriously a Charter that institutionalizes race-based discrimination as a constitutional principle. In this respect, the First Nations’ contempt for Canadian authority is most instructive. As Mohawk Grand Chief Mike Delisle explained to CTV, “We don’t consider ourselves Canadians.” Well, except for the purposes of federal welfare. And top billing at the Olympics ceremony.

Speaking of Canadian values, they sound so nice when you’re floating choreographically over the Prairies on a massive CanCon bender. But what do they boil down to on the ground? Mme Marise Myrand is a 389-lb. diabetic who lives in Ste-Marie-de-Beauce in la belle province. She asked her condo association to give her a parking space nearer the door of the building. The board responded that it wasn’t for them to take somebody else’s spot and transfer it to her, but suggested Mme Myrand ask the occupant of the other space directly. Mme Jocelyne Nolet is a short- order cook in her sixties with an injured shoulder, and declined to accommodate Mme Myrand. So the aggrieved wound up at the Quebec “Human Rights” Tribunal, which ordered the condo association to hand over the parking space to Mme Myrand by March 1 and, for good measure, fined all 35 of her co-owners a total of $10,000 to be given to the plaintiff in compensation.

It was reported that, in the course of her battle with her co-owners, Mme Myrand had been subject to “degrading remarks” about using her obesity to get a better parking space. In her judgment, Michèle Pauzé fined the association $3,000 in punitive damages because these remarks “heurtaient les valeurs d’inclusion promulguées dans notre société”—i.e., they conflict with the inclusive values promulgated by our society.

Oh, right. So privately expressing sentiments at odds with the state ideology may result in seizure of assets. Unless, of course, you’re a Mohawk who wants to kick out the lousy half-breed next door.

On March 29, the trial of Guy Earle opens at the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal. Mr. Earle is a stand-up comic who late one night at a Vancouver comedy club put down some drunken hecklers. Alas for him, they were of the lesbian persuasion and so they hauled his homophobic ass into “human rights” court. Any Olympic tourists still in town may marvel at a country that prosecutes a comedian for his stand-up act, but no doubt Chief Commissar Heather MacNaughton, previously the presiding kangaroo of the Maclean’s show trial, will be more sympathetic to the notion that Mr. Earle’s jokes “heurtaient les valeurs d’inclusion promulguées dans notre société.”

Odd how the “inclusive values” hymned by Commissar Pauzé require more and more muscle to enforce them. The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, unless you’re a Mohawk who’s getting overly inclusive in his horizontal outreach. But the state apparently has a place in comedy criticism and parking-lot conversations and on all the other ever-multiplying front lines of diversity. A genuinely free society has to be free to say rude things to the morbidly obese or the Sapphically soused, because the price of smoothing out all the rough edges is a bureaucracy with powers ever vaster and ever more whimsical. Real systemic provocations to “les valeurs d’inclusion”—whether on Mohawk reserves or in Montreal mosques—will be given a pass on cultural grounds, but the apparatchiks of ideological enforcements will pick on softer and softer targets, like Guy Earle, and destroy their lives.

Canada’s “human rights” circus is an alternative Olympics ceremony all of its own. What a cavalcade it would have made: Indians, Inuit, and the disabled? Big deal. Where was the pre-op transsexual who sued the London health club for being denied the right to flaunt her wedding tackle in the ladies’ shower? Like Joni Mitchell’s song says, she’s looked at life from both sides now. What about an opening scene where the Olympic cauldron is lit and stand-up comedians of insufficiently diverse orientation are thrown into the inferno to placate the Gods of Inclusion while Maritime step dancers perform a synchronized Quebec parking-lot dispute? Instead of the usual Cirque du So Lame, couldn’t we have a real, honest-to-goodness genuinely Canadian bizarro diversity celebration? After all, it’s more real than the official version.

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A missed opportunity for diversity

"Putting aside its other defects, no self-respecting citizen should take seriously a Charter that institutionalizes race-based discrimination as a constitutional principle."

Spot on. I lived abroad and people asked me about Natives and reserves, how did it work. About thirty seconds into my explanation of reserves, blood lines, different laws/regulations and I realized Canada has apartheid system and here we are celebrating it at the Olympics as one of the things we are most proud of. God help the world when it comes to earnest Canadians and their multi-culti bollocks.

I enjoy the Steyn columns when he focuses on the absurdities of our 'human rights' apparatchiks because he is funny and the apparat can take anything but mockery and laughter.

The South African ambassador – Glen Babbit – said that the idea for apartheid in South Africa came from the Canadian reservation system.

Snow goose on February 25, 2010 at 9:37 pm

Seriously? It would not surprise me but I had not heard that.

It is appalling system – everything Canadians do to produce wealth and prosperity are denied to natives if they don't want to leave their homes on reserves. It is no coincidence that Natives, the community with the worst lives within Canada, are the only ethnic group with their own Government department.

You make it sound as if the gov't forces them to stay there. For a whole host of reasons [ some valid, some probably not] natives have chosen to remain there. The debate is nowhere near as simple as you or Styne would have it. And no, i don't have any answers. At least none you or Styne would probably like.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 1:12 am

Steyn makes no such claim. True, the form of apartheid represented by the reserve system does not force Indians to live 'apart'. It is strictly voluntary. Steyn's point is that Indians, on the other hand, are constitutionally empowered to kick people who are of unsufficient racial purity off reserves.

i was replying to Joylon, who loves to blame the govt/bueaucracy for eveything under the sun. Steyn's penchent for oversimplification is well established by now. Neither did i say i agree with kicking people out.

kcm on February 27, 2010 at 12:47 pm

Steyn's "penchant" is not "for oversimplification" but for making politically incorrect observations on matters of fact. Those who dislike his observations typically try to put words in his mouth and accuse him of "oversimplifying". And, by the way, no one said you agreed with Indian racism.

Outstanding article. Actually it was really just a good solid article but given the paucity of un-PC here and elsewhere it stands out. In particular, our obsession with diversity is not just unscientific, it's downright creepy, and I am delighted to see a prominent member of the American media point that out.

A couple questions: you waited 8 paragraphs before you mention Islam, and even then only in passing; do you still get paid by your anti-Muslim handlers for this article? Next question: do you get booted out of The Neo-Cons for squandering an opportunity to incite hatred against Muslims?

But seriously, diversity is to the Van Olympics as Islam is to Mark Steyn: an unhealthy and unscientific obsession which greatly deters from their respective bodies of work.

i never thought i would ever want to give a thumbs up to this troll…which i can't, but i would if i could. So, do you mean what you said, or are you merely poking the proverbial stick in Steyn's eye?

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 1:19 am

I think perhaps the obsession is yours.

Xty on February 26, 2010 at 1:07 am

Mark! What can I say? Brilliant!!!

Thomas_L....... on February 25, 2010 at 9:46 am

Fine work, but there was one missed opportunity for mockery here. If you suffered through the entire opening miasma, you might have noticed that the thematic journey across Canada from Nova Scotia to B.C. skipped right over Ontario, missing, er, the majority of the population. Turns out there actually was a Toronto-centric section planned, featuring local boys done good Rush playing their instrumental "YYZ"–but the entire segment was scrubbed at the last minute. Apparently the sensitivity barons of the Vancouver committee decided that the whole thing was "too rock" in light of the accidental fatality on the Luge track earlier that day, and ordered Messers. Lee, Lifeson and Peart to "exit… stage left."

Buck Futt on February 25, 2010 at 9:57 am

Gah! My son loves Rush and especially YYZ – they could have had a global audience of 3 billion and 1! Then again, he is a middle class Anglo male, so maybe it wouldn't have registered.

IainC on March 3, 2010 at 2:21 am

I do not pay much attention to your country's peccadilloes concerning cultural differences. Are you actually measuring DNA of reservation occupants and banishing those who do not meet specs? Surely Steyn is way off-base on that one. He must just be torqued because he was messed over by your PC Police for pointing out the obvious to the ostriches in the crowd. He must have lost his bearings. This can't be real.

"Precisely who is considered a Mohawk is a four-step process involving blood quantum, family relations, quality of character, and communal standing. At Akwesasne a person might be 100 per cent native genetically but if they do not adhere to the social standards of the community they might be excluded or expelled."

Really? If I own an apartment house am I permitted to evict people based on their race?

Tom_Y on February 25, 2010 at 2:24 pm

Wrong Jack. Let's say you started discussing which outsiders are allowed to live in Canada. Like say, those who adhere to a certain Abrahamic religion with a peculiar interest in terrorism? Would you be even allowed to talk about not allowing them in Canada? Or would you be hauled before a Human Rights Commission and re-educated to the tune of $5,000?

Two:
"As to "blood quantum," anybody born to Canadian parents anywhere in the world is Canadian. It's exactly the same thing with the First Nations. If you're not born to a Mohawk parent, you're not Mohawk. That's not "measuring DNA," it's exactly what we do ourselves with regard to Canadian citizenship. "

No genius, it's not. Anyone born on Canadian soil is a Canadian citizen, regardless of their whether or not their parents are Canadian. Moreover, some peope (like me) can become Canadian even though they weren't even born in Canada and neither were their parents. That seems to me to be entirely different than the Mohawk rules for "citizenship".

Peter K on February 25, 2010 at 3:01 pm

The Canadian nation is one thing the Mohawk nation is another. I don't think we should wander around demanding that every other nation define itself as we define ourselves. I think our definition is better, but different strokes for different folks. Next thing you'll be demanding that every Yemeni be granted Danish citizenship just by asking for it — and let me warn you, they won't like that around here. No sirrrreeee.

The Mohawk rules for citizenship are unacceptably vague, I'll give you that. Unless I'm mistaken, I do believe outsiders can become Mohawk, but that you don't automatically become Mohawk just by moving to Kahnawake. Sort of like illegal immigrants don't automatically become American by sneaking across the Mexican border.

There will be no moving to Kahnawake, and no becoming Mohawk. But there certainly will be moving out of Kahnawake and becoming not Mohawk. There is the coercion and racism. Completely different from illegal immigration which is not race based.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 8:23 pm

Citizenship in the USA and Canada is indeed partially race-based. The children of Canadians are Canadian: they pass on the right of citizenship to their children.

Yes, the Mohawks of Kahnawake do have non-member residence status. We also have adoption in our traditional ceremonial longhouse. They never came to the longhouse, they never went to the band council. The people being asked to leave NEVER applied to either the traditionalist or the Band Council. The story doesn't give you all the facts.

Mohawk lady on March 23, 2010 at 7:57 am

Thanks for your part two – bang on and saved me the trouble of trying to explain it to our odd poster, who seems determined to misunderstand what the difference is.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 8:16 pm

Yes, but Canada could have laws that said that only someone actually born on Canadian soil is Canadian, and not allow immigrants to acquire citizenship.

Germany, for many years, had laws that said that children born in the country had the nationality of their father (unless that would leave them stateless). I know that because I was born there to a German mother and a non-German father, and am not entitled to German citizenship.

If Canada changed their immigration laws to say that marrying a Canadian wasn't a free ticket into the country anymore, and if you didn't meet the other criteria to come in as a skilled immigrant you wouldn't get residency, and it was your Canadian spouse who had to move to your country, what would you think?

That's what I'm trying to wrap my mind around, particularly since my husband is not Canadian.

(As an aside, I read that this band resolution was voted on many years ago, and that there was a change in law a few years ago that makes the Human Rights Code apply to the Indian Act. So to Mr. Steyn's delight, the Mohawk council might end up being hauled before a Human Rights Tribunal)

Marion on February 26, 2010 at 10:28 pm

No the Human Right Code doesn't apply to Aboriginals. We are not Canadians. We are not Americans. Nor do we want to be assimilated either. Genocide is any ugly word just like the word racism. Which one is worse. The Indian Act wasn't made by the Aboriginals. We didn't place our selves on Reservations. It was the non-natives that made those stipulations. What is a Native Reservation? Who is suppose to live there?

Mohawk lady on March 23, 2010 at 8:04 am

Once again. It has nothing to do with racial purtiy. We have many non-natives living here. They either were married before 1985 and allowed to stay or they went through the application process of becoming non-member residence. Either way, if they didn't go through either process then they are being asked to leave. I know Canada has immigration laws too. Are you calling Canada racist because it doesn't have an open door policy for everyone? So many are making remarks and don't even have all the details. Im glad Jack seems to be educated and patient in trying to explain facts to you.

Mohawk lady on March 23, 2010 at 9:18 am

I'm surprised you would defend the Mohawks in this instance, since they really have gone down a blind alley on this. No society that tries to protect its racial purity by exclusion has a chance of long-term survival. In fact, the very attempt flags that they are doomed to stagnation and failure.

Also, I agree with the term "apartheid" as an apt name for the reserve system. We have built and are funding a scheme whereby a racially defined section of the population will be induced to live separately. It is true that we do not coerce (we aggressively bribe instead) and it is also true that we do not anymore openly call the aboriginal people to be racially inferior. But in every other respect, this is apartheid.

Bill Simpson on February 25, 2010 at 1:29 pm

As I've just mentioned above, I'm not saying this is a good idea, but the "apartheid" rhetoric is ridiculously overwrought. First, there is no coercion, as you point out. Second, First Nations are a minority, not a majority. Third, they are not being barred from living anywhere, it's outsiders who are not allowed to squat on reserves. Fourth, it's a deliberately incendiary term and you can perfectly well make your case without the rhetorical flourishes.

Your point of view seems to take it for granted that First Nations are just one minority among all the other minorities in Canada. But they're not, we have treaty obligations to most of them. We made a deal with their ancestors that they wouldn't attack us, and we are both legally and morally obliged to honour that deal. The problem is that the deals were with ancestrally defined nations, not with political entities as we would recognise them. If the First Nations had territorial autonomy these grey areas wouldn't arise.

Is it "apartheid" (or what have you) for the Americans to expel illegal immigrants? That's just what the Mohawks are doing here, albeit with a pretty vague and subjective set of criteria.

We do not have treaty obligations to Kahnawake, please retract this falsehood.

OnTheJob on February 25, 2010 at 6:57 pm

Assigning "nationhood" to small ( in some cases just a few hundred) nomadic or semi-nomadic bands is an absurdity, and our "treaties" were generally nasty little deals to pay off the chiefs of these outfits with no long term benefit except to HBS etc.

But this is all so much history. If we want to help the people now living their lives on these reserves, we could start by pointing out that it is 2010, that the world is full of all sorts of cultures and races, and they had either better join the rest of us and participate in the culture and economies of the modern world or face continuing poverty and misery.

It would also liberate them from their leaders, who are generally corrupt and self-serving, and who have now, in the case of the Mohawk, decided that they can selectively cut people out of their band based on whether they pass some vague definition of racial purity.

As for the analogies to Canada or the USA deporting people, this is based on legal definitions of citizenship, not on some conception of "Canadianism" or whatever.

Bill Simpson on February 25, 2010 at 3:08 pm

It's much more complicated than that. We already tried assimilation and it failed miserably. We already tried paternalism ("liberate them from their leaders") and that failed miserably. The only alternatives are the status quo, which as you say is a disaster on many reserves, or self-government, which requires a lot of patient negotiation and gradual change — not helped by the kind of hostility Steyn and the Steynettes are showing here. Ideology will get us absolutely nowhere on First Nations issues and we desperately have to get somewhere or we're looking at a major social crisis in the next 50 years.

The social crisis is now. I agree "ideology will get us absolutely nowhere", so here's a thought- let's let the "first" (or second or third, not to quibble) nations figure it out themselves, on their own dime. Surely the tens of billions of dollars dumped into the gaping maw of the native appeasment industry is sufficient reparation for whatever harm our great great great great grandparents might have caused the poor souls.

Firewalls r us on February 25, 2010 at 6:07 pm

The irony is that an ideology (Canadian Multiculturalism) did get us here.

And the problem is damn easy to solve. Cut off the money. The reason there is a social crisis is because of the money. Canadian Aboriginals have the highest birth rate in the country – a luxury given to them by the truckloads of free cash the rest of the country doles out to them. The solution (tons of free money to Aboriginals) creates the problem (crowded welfare ghettoes that require even more money).

Peter K on February 25, 2010 at 6:44 pm

That highest birthrate in the country (might be exceeded by a certain perpetually on-their-knees-to-Mecca crowd) also provides one of the highest rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in the country as well. Now that is progress.

Know the best way to solve the problem? Make it a requirement that all individuals within a reserve own the land their house is on, and own the house too. Not the Reserve – the individual. Once you actually own something that is actually yours, not at the whim of the band to throw you out, EVERYTHING changes.

The power of the chief? gone!
Rule of law to protect property rights? Come on in.
Growth of individual wealth? Changes everything.

Right to marry whoever you want, thus muddifying the 'purity' of the race? Bring it on

Then welcome to our everyday life of fixing your house, working to maintain it, rule of law to keep thugs off of it and crooks from stealing it.

Worked wonders for everybody else in North America.

My culture? I'm not interested in being able to worhsip Stonehenge in my everyday ratskins that my forefathers did in England while the life expectancy was 35. Give me a dignified worthwhile life in N. America. Let them have the opportunity as well.

Fletcher on February 26, 2010 at 1:26 am

Did you lift that word for word from an old SA apartheid primer?

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 1:46 am

The land that remains in limbo as to legal owership likely has reaped far more financial benefits over time for those who have and continue to extract it resources, those who were able to create economies on it, and those who were able to just live on it and be able to call it their own. The fiduciary costs (primarily welfare) of the relatively small parcels of land allocated to Native people likely does not compare. But the SYSTEM that was set up starting with the Royal Proclamation and the Indian Act, the residential schools etc. is what continues to cost everyone. I think most elected leaders in First Nations would like to dismantle this system, but there is still treaties and other land claim battles to negotiate about.

"Your point of view seems to take it for granted that First Nations are just one minority among all the other minorities in Canada. But they're not, we have treaty obligations to most of them."

Oh yeah, whatever. Most aboriginals re-signed those treaties limiting them to certain parcels of land in exchange for concessions at the time. And whoops, now those aren't convenient anymore so they're pursuing the original treaties – and the Supreme Court is OK with this! Because they ruled the Aboroginals have no concept of time or some crap like that.

Peter K on February 25, 2010 at 3:14 pm

Thanks for making your position clear: the treaties don't count. Good luck with that.

Mr. Mitchell, would you be so kind as to provide for us the "treaties", plural, that "we" signed with the Mohawk "nation" giving them, quote, "control of that land for all time", as you have alleged in this thread?

OnTheJob on February 25, 2010 at 5:07 pm

I provided a link to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, but it seems to have vanished. A-googling you will go.

The Royal Proclamation, which I don't need to Google and is not a treaty, forbid European settlers from buying land from Natives. That's all.

It actually affirms the crown's claim to all of Canada and was directed to lands well to the west of Lower Canada and is not relevant to Lower Canada which was already settled. There are few if any treaties in effect east of the Ontario border, and the Jay Treaty does not confer "control of that land for all time".

Your repeated claims that the Mohawks of Kahnawake have a treaty are simply false. Please acknowledge that and retract your statements.

OnTheJob on February 25, 2010 at 6:55 pm

You're right, there doesn't appear to be a treaty in the case of Kahnawake, but there is a historical continuity of Mohawk title from, oh, 1680. About the time your ancestors were being ridden over in the mud by madeira-sodden cavaliers' carriages and muttering something about "yeomen's rights."

However, you seem to be implying that a) the Royal Proclamation is relevant for everything further than Montreal and b) that the treaties are even better, so we'll tag you as a pro-FN activist for Ontario and points west.

But having or not having a treaty has nothing to do with whether or not this is an apartheid system. Treaties don't provide immunity from moral behaviour.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 8:30 pm

Well, the Danes and the Kazakhs inhabit the same continent. Should anybody from either nation be allowed to go live in the other's territory? Same situation here. You guys need to grasp that the Mohawks are a fully fledged nation within Canada, not just a neighbourhood.

Then stop taking money from the Canadians you are distinct from and start behaving like a nation.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 10:36 pm

They in fact lack the qualifications for nationhood including ability to survive on their own without eternal handouts as well as the ability to defend their territory should non-Natives decide they are tired of being endangered by the flouting of Canadian law. This pretense that there are over 600 "nations" in Canada is PC to the point of idiocy. Some have a handful of members, many have chiefs who earn more than the Prime Minister to 35 million. Insanity.

It's likely true that some of the bads are too small. But again, if we had addressed resource rights/ownership properly in the past, we might not now be in this mess. We ripped them off, and stuck them on reserves with a welfare soother…and your the one complaining.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:18 am

Lets not forget that the Mohawk are part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Which consists of Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk, Oneida and Tuscarora. We are located on both sides of YOUR border. We are neither Canadians or Americans. When the first Europeans arrived the Iroquois Nations made a treaty with the Dutch traders. That first agreement was known as the Two Row Wampum in 1613 and it explained how the Iroquois and Dutch would travel through life in parallel and not attempt to run the other's lives. "You say that you are our Father and I am your son. We say, We will not be like Father and Son, but like Brothers. This wampum belt confirms our words. These two rows will symbolize two paths or two vessels, traveling down the same river together. One, a birch bark canoe, will be for the Indian People, their laws, their customs and their ways. The other, a ship, will be for the white people and their laws, their customs and their ways. We shall each travel the river together, side by side, but in our boat. Neither of us will make compulsory laws or interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Neither of us will try to steer the other's vessel. The agreement has been kept by the Iroquois to this date." Just mind your own affairs and we will take care of our own affairs. Who are you to tell me that I must keep allowing non-natives to keep taking our land. Enough is enough already. We have to right to SURVIVE. We do not want to assimilate into Canada. Those non-native people being asked to leave here never applied (we have applications) to be non-member residence. It would be like me just entering your house and I never even knocked on the door.

Mohawk lady on March 23, 2010 at 8:21 am

Take a look at the Delgamuukw decision…don't have a link…don't really know if it addresses the mohawk treaty rights. But it's certanly a landmark decision.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:14 am

Because they ruled the Aboroginals have no concept of time or some crap like that.

Time to yank the Lion and the Unicorn off our coat of arms I say. A black sheep (suitably neutered of course) and some form of hermaphroditic jelly-fish should do nicely.

Jamie MacMaster on February 25, 2010 at 11:12 am

I have never understood why, in Canada, everything everywhere is required to be presented in both English and French, and all government positions are required to be filled by people bilingual in English and French – everywhere, that is, except in Quebec, where everything is exclusively in French only and blatant and open discrimination is common against English speakers.

By and large Canadians are a wonderful people but they suffer from terminal political correctness that would just be silly, except that it actually makes a mockery of freedom of thought and enforces a bland and blind conformity.

Not Chicken Little on February 25, 2010 at 11:13 am

It's the notwithstanding clause. Thanks to St. Pierre du Canoë!

Thomas_L....... on February 25, 2010 at 2:33 pm

Trudeau argued against the clause, but don't let the facts slow you down.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:22 am

"…blatant and open discrimination is common against English speakers. " Huge exageration.

Dude on February 25, 2010 at 4:02 pm

No, it's spot on. In 1989 Bourassa himself boasted that the Quebec government had successfully suspended fundamental Canadian liberties. Let's count the ways:
– Attempts to stop English speakers from sending their kids to English-language schools.
– Illegal to have only an English business name in Quebec; all businesses must have a French name and where a business has both, the French name must be "markedly predominant".
– Public billboards must be exclusively French, no English allowed.
– Signs on public transportation vehicles and stations must be exclusively French. No right to English response when speaking to any transit employee.
– All business documents and applications must be in French; no right to a choice as in rest of Canada.
– Illegal anywhere in Quebec private industry to specify that English ability is a condition of employment.
– The "Commission de protection de la langue française" commonly harass small businesses if they perceive the quality of French spoken to be poor, with penalties imposed through tribunals that look a lot like the human rights kangaroo system.

Try that anywhere else in Canada and you will be dragged to court or a HRC somewhere before you can say "Quebec sucks".

Rete on February 25, 2010 at 9:49 pm

NOT a huge exageration at all.

Any anglophone that moves to QC, say by marriage, they will not be entitled to French language courses like any other new 'immigrant' resident. These 'invited' ones get a three year course and day care if you are a mother with children..which is good, but why are just Canadians excluded?
We, the ROC are uninvited to reside in QC and that's obvious for sure.

Try getting essential services off the island if you don't speak French, you'll be outright denied as was in my case.
Not surprised that this blantent racism is allowed by the Mowhawks of QC, they're just following along with the political tone of the province.
Been there, done that, never again.

filter on February 28, 2010 at 4:34 pm

So true. In Quebec it is actually taken for granted that french is under constant threat from english. Anglophobia, or mistrust and even pure hatred towards all peoples and things english speaking is actually embraced and supported by the overwhelming majority of francophnes. The french media in Quebec is intensely nationalist and anti-english.
The quebecois atitude towards the rest of Canada is that it is not their country period. Isolationism, anglophobia and total ignorance of the other is deeply engrained within the quebecois culture. They are too isolated and ignorant to realize how bigoted and intolerant a culture they are.
They encourage hatred and intolerance and then wonder why so many Canadians hate Quebec. I live in Montreal, and I would love to see a political party founded for the seperation of Montreal from this loser province. Quebec nationalism has done so much to harm Montreal over the decades. Nationalists are far too isolated and myopic to see their wrongheadedness.
Sewing the seeds of hate will always bring you hate in return. Quebec nationalists will never realize that it is they who are the problem and no one else.

Guest on February 26, 2010 at 8:25 am

So true, Mark. In reality, there is no "diversity" of any kind in Canada; it's just ideological claptrap. In reality, everyone looks, acts, and thinks exactly like you.

mattbin on February 25, 2010 at 12:39 pm

So true, Mark. In reality, there is no "diversity" of any kind in Canada; it's just ideological claptrap. In reality, everyone looks, acts, and thinks exactly like you.

mattbin on February 25, 2010 at 12:39 pm

I was waiting for the native dancers to set up a road block at the entrance to the stadium.

blair on February 25, 2010 at 1:15 pm

I was waiting for the pack of dogs to show up and start chasing the children around the stadium

anon on February 25, 2010 at 6:15 pm

I was waiting for cops to bust in and start randomly tasering people

JonahH on February 25, 2010 at 6:47 pm

No doubt VANOC had similar thoughts. It's why there was so much emphasis on aboriginal outreach at the games (aka "sucking up to Indians").

So native people are not funded by Canadian tax dollars?
They are not kicking people off the reservation based on % of native race blood?

Or do you mean,…" Mark, Don't say the truth, it makes me feel uncomfortable"

Dude on February 25, 2010 at 5:26 pm

Too close to the truth Jill?

FredA on February 26, 2010 at 1:47 pm

Good point Mark,

As long as the first priority of Canadian legislators is to create "equality" at all costs bizarre circumstances such as the example of Mohawks conducting detailed racial profiling will exist. This enables a myriad of head hurting weirdness as governing morons contrive of new ways to make certain sectors of people "equal" even at the expense of basic constitutional freedoms.

I'll opt for less equality and more freedoms thanks. Ironically, exercising greater personal freedoms would, I think, result in fewer painful contortions of civil legislation and society and more legitimate equality among Canadian residents across the board.

Free Canada on February 25, 2010 at 2:12 pm

"exercising greater personal freedoms would, I think, result in fewer painful contortions of civil legislation and society and more legitimate equality among Canadian residents across the board."

However …. it would also result in higher unemployment amongst those inclined to seek employment in the idiocracy, where it is essential to find ever more reasons to impose their will on the rest of us, and expand their purview. God forbid they should lead productive lives!

'notherplanet on February 26, 2010 at 3:13 pm

No, because you have not signed a treaty with the Government of Canada granting you control of that land for all time.

I think I've got it. If you bargain collectively with the state about your land rights, evictions on the basis of racial purity are morally acceptable.

Tom_Y on February 25, 2010 at 2:50 pm

Great article. I think they need to start teaching logic in school again, because most PC/PETA/Human Rights types have no idea how to apply it.

JimD on February 25, 2010 at 2:51 pm

as a high school student you have no idea how much i agree with you. our history or "social" classes are nothing more then dumbed down, PC, brain numbing dribble that for the past 10 years or so has taught nothing but how evil white people are and how noble and wonderful native people are. perhaps the most offensive travesty is how these classes operate under the pretense of "teaching critical thinking".

theintellectual on February 26, 2010 at 2:52 pm

I've been reading all the newspaper articles and internet news concerning the evictions. Let me tell you that the majority of Canadians are not educated about Aboriginals, treaties, Indian Act, Human Rights and History. Most are not aware that is was because of the Mohawk Allies that you were able to have Canada. So many are lacking an education. Calling us racist. It has nothing to do with RACE. We don't hate non-natives. They just have to apply to become a non-member resident. Even the writer of the article is hateful towards Natives by saying "I was impressed to discover that there are actually people willing to move to native reserves".

Mohawk lady on March 23, 2010 at 9:09 am

The Mohawks are the State on Kahnawake, at least in large part. It's not private persons evicting the 26 victims, it's the Band.

Thank you for finally agreeing that evictions on the basis of race (ancestral DNA) are not morally acceptable. It took you long enough. By the way, that was the main point of Steyn's piece.

Tom_Y on February 25, 2010 at 3:23 pm

The question of whether something is morally acceptable should be your first criterion for all decisions.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 8:12 pm

There are competing moralities. In this case, we have (on the one hand) the unfortunate emphasis on race and (on the other) Canada's duty to respect First Nations' right to determine band membership. We need to get used to the idea that they're sometimes going to make what seem to us like appalling decisions and there's nothing we can or should do about it. There are hundreds of First Nations in Canada and some will be peaceful, inclusive, happy communities and some will be nightmarishly authoritarian systems. It's up to a First Nation's own members to rectify injustice, as it would be up to us to rectify injustice in Canada if Canada ever went off the rails.

It is not possible to simply allow small areas within Canada to adopt any laws they choose. There is already a terrible problem with smuggling and weapons and drugs because we allow First Nations to operate outside of Canadian Law. Why do we just need to get used to this? And if we are to accept nightmarish systems, are we to ignore the victims of those governments? But back to morals – you are actually defending banning mixed race marriage. Shame on you.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 11:04 pm

Canadians are subsidizing these voluntary Bantustans whose reprehensible qualities are due entirely to their own poor leadership as demonstrated by the success of a few tribes with good leadership such as Chief Louie in BC. If Natives are unwilling to live by Canadian law, then they do not need any Canadian filthy lucre either.

Jack, your argument is very thoughtful and it sounds like you understand the historical and present issues that explain the Mohawks' decision. Adding to this, I think that many of the Mohawk citizens may be cringing at the decision of some of their current leaders.

Knowing Kahnawake, the interior politics is probably pretty intense right now, even by Mohawk standards. I'm sure the majority of Kahnawake Mohawks are seriously annoyed and embarrassed by this, at least when they're not talking to us.

Canada is a parliamentary democracy, if a majority of MP's retroactively decide that all black Canadians are ineligible for citizenship and should be deported, you would shrug your shoulders and agree?

There is some dissent…don't know how much…i know i've probably spoiled the all mohawks are racist narrative, so sorry.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:26 am

"i know i've probably spoiled the all mohawks are racist narrative, so sorry."

There are other commenters from whom that kind of smear is routine, but I have to admit I didn't expect it from you! (I guess this might not be the genuine kcm given that it's not an IntenseDebate handle)

Anyway if there is some dissent that's good. I haven't heard about it, which could be for several reasons.

Wait, wait, wait… hold on a sec. What on Earth does ONE mohawk reserve in Quebec have to do with the West Coast First Nations represented at the Olympics opening ceremony? All that making this connection serves is an open display Mark Steyn's abrassive and flagrant bigotry towards Canada's Natives. Suggestions that Natives are getting any sort of "free ride" in this country are so laughably ignorant and frighteningly racist that I shudder to think how Mr. Steyn has any supporters in this country.

JonahH on February 25, 2010 at 5:43 pm

"Suggestions that Natives are getting any sort of "free ride" in this country"

Ah yes, the racist card, right at the top of the leftist's pack. Natives and their ways are above criticism or even the truth. The fact that they are massively subsidized by Canadian taxpayers to the tune of $10,000 per man, woman and child, making $40,000 to a family with two kids just vanishes in the flap of a leftist's tongue. Then there are casino earnings, land and natural resource concessions, "reparations" to anyone who ever attended a religious school even if their parents sent them and/or they suffered no abuse, extra funding for a mismanaged native university and dreadful unaccountable social programs that result in unacceptable death rates for native children etc. Sounds like a free ride all right, destination hell, like most socialist plans.

Okay, how does this sound? I'll give you and your family $40 000 and let you run a casino and you won't have to pay any taxes, but in exchange I will poison your drinking water, make it impossible for your friends, neighbours and extended family to earn a living in the way they of their chosing, abduct your children and sexually abuse them, have armed thugs beat you and arrest you without cause, and then demolish your home and forcibly transplant you to an area with no infrasturcture or clean drinking water. SOund like a fair trade?

JonahH on February 26, 2010 at 1:05 pm

So many inanities, so little time. But let's take the "poisoned" drinking water. The most recent case involved a $3. broken part that no one in the Native community was capable of diagnosing or repairing and waited helplessly for some non-Native government employee to travel up north to save them.
Sorry, but earning your living in the way it was done over a hundred years ago is just not feasible anymore requiring acres of land per person and no one is preventing Natives from going anywhere in Canada or earning their own living. With the abducted children you jump back in time again and simplify, as many Native parents chose the option of religious schools for their kids as the best education option and so it was for many. Incidentally, when are Natives themselves going to show the same level of care for their children that they demanded from strangers? Where is the condemnation of fetal alcohol syndrome due to drinking during pregnancy, angst about glue sniffing and suicide deaths, maulings by feral dogs, drive by shootings of infants by Native gangs, youths burned in unsupervised houses, infants dropped in snowbanks by drunken parents?
As for the ravings about beatings by armed thugs, hard to say what time and place you've time traveled to there.
As it happens, my family had much worse happen to them than what you've described above and to ourselves, not distant ancestors before we reached sanctuary in Canada. Funny, we weren't given a "get out of all responsibility for your own life" card, and a good thing too when one sees the results of learned helplessness among the Natives .

Okay. So, obviously we disagree about the relevance of things that happened more than 50 years ago. Fair enough. Although, I do think you're downplaying the impact and significance of the Residential Schools. I am willing to bet that one thing we CAN agree on is that the government has handled issues surrounding indigenous people in the worst possible ways, and shows no sign of stopping.

I do think you should look more into what actually goes on on reserves. Have you been to one? Look into the mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows, or the record level of police brutality at Six Nations. Look into the Indigenous communities living downstream from the Tar Sands and the record level of rare cancers they are contracting.

I don't believe that our Indigenous peoples should have a "get out of jail free card", as you say, and of course there are huge problems within the Indigenous communities themselves, but to pretend that they have some sort of free ride, or are in any kind of enviable position is complete bunk, and I'm sure from your comments that you're smart enough to see that.

JonahH on February 27, 2010 at 10:43 am

Gee I'd like to earn a living in the wary of my choosing too. Abduct your children? You mean from drunken parents, sexual abuse from your relatives and lack of care. That happens to white people too. White people too were abused in schools. Armed thugs (?) arrest without cause. Ya sure.
Its funny how immigrants from all over the world can come to Canada and in one generation own business, property and have educated children. Indians are stuck in their "culture", which is dead Jonah. It needs to adapt like everyone's culture has adapted to the modern world. i don't live or think like an eighteenth century Englishman, you should give up on the 18th century Indian thing.

Rob H on February 28, 2010 at 2:52 am

Well, I suppose if you believe in the moral right of one people to impose their culture on another, then you're absolutely right. Just a difference of beliefs, I guess.

JonahH on February 28, 2010 at 12:52 pm

Just how much of that cool-aid have you been drinking there Jonah?

FredA on February 26, 2010 at 8:49 am

Oh dear! Paid any taxes lately, Jonah?

I pay a lot and a fair bit of that goes towards keeping you in the lifestyle you demand.

Anyway, you read MS and that is definitely to be commended.

All the best.

jlc on February 26, 2010 at 11:07 am

Brilliant, Refreshing, Right on the mark (no pun intended but, at the end of the day quite depressing because Canada has so many with vested interests in the current silly diversity/multicultural fallacy of tolerance and inclusiveness. Not the least of these vested interests are non-governmental organizations feeding of government grants to perpetrate the diversity nonsense. and then there are aboriginals gobbling up something like $10 billion a year from the Canada they claim not to be part of. if they aren't Canadians then why shoulod we be giving them our taxes that might be better improving our hapless health care system.

JARA321 on February 25, 2010 at 5:59 pm

Wow! This drivel was…. "brilliant"? Right on the mark? The Yankees have just spent $900 billion on resuscitating Wall Street with TAXPAYERS' money! Harper inherited $14 billion thanks to tightward Martin, and he's managed to WASTE $56 billion of Canadian Taxpayers' money so far. Where did it go? Other than to Conservative hacks' ridings? Not to natives. Aboriginals were here first. You're sitting on their land that your ancestors, wherever from, stole from them! You should be grateful that the French and English colonialists (adventurers, failed bureaucrats, famine and jail escapees among other spirited guys) managed to massacre the locals and take over their land for expropriation. What our NATIVE sons and daughters want is some recognition for the plight of being slaves in their own land. Don't act as if it's legitimately OUR land. Your Tax Dollars wouldn't begin to compensate for what these "natives" have put up with. Rape and pillage…and they still get treated like third class citizens IN THEIR OWN LAND. Let's show some respect.

pat on February 25, 2010 at 6:37 pm

Whatever. I'm an immigrant to Canada from decidedly non-colonial Eastern Europe. I "stole" noone's land. The fact that Aboriginals were here first means nothing. Everyone else is here now, and they all deserve equal rights under the law.

"Don't act as if it's legitimately OUR land."
Irrelevant. The city I grew up in in Eastern Europe used to belong to a different country. Now it belongs to the country of my birth. The homes of my great grandparents were confiscated and are also now situated in a country not theirs. Do I go whining for compensation and land claims? No.

The natives are "slaves in their own land"? Are you for real? What the hell are you talking about. If you're a Status Native you get tax breaks, free university educations, guaranteed free room and board on your reserve lands, free food, free everything. Also unlimited fishing, trapping, hunting rights. You call that slavery? What kind of a dream world are you living in?

Peter K on February 25, 2010 at 6:53 pm

Slavery?

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 10:44 pm

A PC dream world built around the fiction of the "noble savage" who can do no wrong.

Another ignoramous who hasn't set foot on a reserve. There's no need to answer anothers hyperpole with your own. Why is it the east europeans who suffered under the communtists, who reliably have no empathy for aboriginals?

kcm on February 27, 2010 at 1:26 pm

Natives did not populate every square inch of Canada and many claims on the basis of "oral history" are suspect and would never be accepted from a non-Native, yet another way the law favors Natives. Many areas of what was a vast and sparsely populated continent were discovered and settled by whites first. Before whites set foot in North America, native tribes often tried and sometimes succeeded in annihilating one another in territorial disputes but you don't see them paying reparations to their enemy's survivors, do you? That's the white man's cross to bear in perpetuity.

Why do you keep on commenting in ways you are not remotely qualified? Read the Delgamuukw decision…oral history is accepted i law. You're embarrassing yourself.

kcm on February 27, 2010 at 1:32 pm

I agree absolutely. The natives were here first. That is the bottom line. Thw white Eurpeans have a habit of stealing countries and robbing the natives of teir self respect and esteem and detroying their innocence. Nothing can compensate for that, ever. Teach future generations this truth and let it not be repeated in the history of humankind.

Sac on February 26, 2010 at 1:23 pm

This is incredibly naive and history illiterate. "destroying native innocence"? Your "noble" savages were annihilating or enslaving each others' tribes long before Columbus crossed the ocean.

All of world history is repeated waves of immigration and repopulation. Most countries existing today made such a through and unmerciful job of exterminating their native populations that none were left to complain. North American colonists were relatively merciful compared to the fate of native peoples elsewhere. So ironically, they are reaping more blame from their thriving native populations with their high birth rates than those who scorched the earth and left only bones.

my ancestors suffered unimaginable horrors from the English. does that mean i get to run back to Britain and demand reparations and special treatment for my forefathers treatment? no. i get a job, pay taxes and live my life just like everyone else. everyone has suffered from one cultural group or another. the celts suffered from the romans, the Hebrews suffered from the Egyptians, the French suffered from the Germans, the Huron suffered from the Iroquois. get over yourself.

theintellectual on February 26, 2010 at 3:08 pm

Pat, your post is depressing evidence of the multi-culti mush that has been rammed into the skulls of our young people over the past couple of generations. Think about it. When the Europeans arrived in North America there were at least 600 different aboriginal tribes here. Pretty near all of them had warriors and war chiefs. Fortified and palisaded villages were common for non-nomadic tribes. Why would that be? There is every reason to believe these people were just as warlike as folk anywhere else on the planet, and that warfare had been endemic in the Americas for the previous 10,000 years. Tribes were no doubt obliterated, slaves were taken, and people displaced for a long, long time before Europeans arrived.

They lost en masse to the Europeans not because they were peaceful tree-huggers with their necks bowed to the slaughter, but simply because their technology was inferior and they were unprepared for old-world diseases.

The aggressive use of force is rarely justified, but it is very common in history, after AND before European arrival. The best we can do is to treat people equally today. Unless you are prepared to move back to your aboriginal nation (for American Indians that would be Asia, if not Africa), and displace whoever is now living there, YOUR words make you a preening hypocrite.

Tom_Y on February 27, 2010 at 4:25 am

Pat, get over yourself. At the end of the day everyone is sitting on someone else's land if you go back far enough -"natives" included.

FredA on February 26, 2010 at 8:51 am

So, everyone who enjoyed the unabashed Canadiana at the Olympics Opening is a "tree hugger" or "socialist"? Mark would be advised to apply south of the border for the Sarah Palin Award in American Journalism Excellence! His phenomenally socially myopic, and, yes, unpatriotic Canada-bashing would earn him the top prize. You betcha!

If Columbus had seen that many Indians, he would have turned around and gone home.

Doug Arthur on February 25, 2010 at 6:36 pm

Yes Doug Arthur, Columbus did see that many and many many more, if you review the history you will find he was actually lost and thought this was in India thus the term "Indian". Interesting how some people act on their assumptions before getting actual facts. Perhaps you are related.

Tsimshianman on June 5, 2010 at 4:05 pm

I was waiting for the Native groups to set up a roadblock and counting coup on the blazing steel-belted radials. Warriors, indeed.

Alex on February 25, 2010 at 7:19 pm

Surely a small people who were and to a great extent are still genetically differentiable from the surrounding population have a right to take measures to preserve themselves.

Mitch on February 25, 2010 at 8:28 pm

But the claim here is not really from a minority in that they state they are a sovereign nation and intend to enforce their "immigration" based on race. That is a repellent notion.

Xty on February 25, 2010 at 10:51 pm

Whites are a small and disappearing people on a world wide scale but are allowed nothing of what you think is owed to Natives "to preserve themselves". Why the double standard? In fact, whites are the only people in the world who are required to give up all their countries to multiculturalism that the inflowing immigrant populations reject in their countries of origin without a scintilla of "yellow, black, brown or red" guilt. Natives can marry whomever they want and live wherever they want in Canada but refuse reciprocity on their territory. Imagine sending a letter to a Native living with a non-Native to vacate the premises because he doesn't belong!

So your not really unhappy the mohawks are doing this…you're just put out that you can't get to do it too?

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 3:22 am

Yes, that's exactly the point this person is trying to make. How incisive of you. What they're doing is racist and they have the full backing of Canadian law. It's perverse.

Dalton on February 26, 2010 at 9:11 am

Actually if you read many of her posts it's an easy conclusion to reach.

kcm on February 27, 2010 at 1:35 pm

Actually, that was the point I was getting to. I do believe rights have that right, especially in countries where they are the indigenous people, but (and its a weaker argument here) countries that they essentially made — Canada, the US, Australia — even though they (we) aren't the original population. So, if I think whites should have that right, so too should Native Americans (or whatever you call them up there.)

Note that worldwide this isn't an unpopular position. Indian, for example, makes it quite easy for 'Desi's' of 3-4 generations away from the motherland to settle (called Person of Indian Origin visa) but has really no mechanism for non-Indian origin people to immigrant permanently. Japan has trouble with allowing Koreans and Chinese in permanently — let alone others who are more racially different. Singapore's immigration policy is designed to keep ethnic balance, with Han Chinese on top.

Mitch on February 26, 2010 at 1:29 pm

Should people be judged by their genetic makeup or the content of their character?

As individuals, sure, but let's face it, people form groups– we couldn't live without doing so — and people like being around their own kind , and indeed want to see people who 'look like them' exist in the future. In the Mohawk case, they are in a real and present danger of being genetically swamped. I think that is a shame. Now, whether state action is justified is another matter. As it stands, however, their policy is not particularly onerous. If you want to dilute your genetic heritage, fine, just move off our reservation. We want to remain who we are.

mitch on February 26, 2010 at 1:34 pm

I don't know who my hunter-gatherer ancestors might have been a few thousand years ago and I doubt they would recognize me, but I'm here.

Doug Arthur on February 26, 2010 at 6:57 pm

"… a real and present danger of being genetically swamped. I think that is a shame."
Why? To build a genetic museum of tribal groups? As Doug Arthur points out we're all distinct from our long ago ancestors. Change happens.
Now preservation of cultural history is another matter that's within the Mohawks' and others' power to achieve. However, that would takes resources that they, in their relative poverty, may not now have. Though they could adopt the traditional aboriginal approach and demand federal funding.

Coming soon to a tropical island near you, the Akaka Bill, named after the Hawaiian Senator who authored it and rythms with – well, you get the idea. If passed (and President Barry is 100% behind it), native Hawaiian will be able to set up their own government on the Hawaiian Islands (presumably a monarchy) funded by Uncle Sam, appropriate their native lands, and be immune from the laws of the US. It will be the first race-based discriminatory government in the States.

And in case you missed it, I did mispell Hawai'ian on purpose. One small protest agains nativitist PC.

James in Houston on February 25, 2010 at 11:10 pm

Yeah, I heard about that, and it's not a good idea in the long run. Was there really such a big push from the Polynesians in Hawaii to have self-government?

Peter K on February 26, 2010 at 12:52 am

It's pretty obvious that Hawaii was taken in the first place to suit the interests of a small number of US businessmen. It really has no place being in the US. However, outright independence would be the honest way to approach the matter.

mitch on February 26, 2010 at 6:36 pm

Because there are a million aboriginal Canadians and they won't be very happy if they're completely screwed over again.

I thought there were zero aboriginal Canadians, and they were all part of a bunch of non-Canada 'nations' that a separate entity called Canada has signed treaties with. You have to decide which is which here.

I lived in Canada for two years (I am from that place beneath Canada.) and I saw little of the Canada I know in the ceremonies.
For the Mohawks, they have fallen into the inevitable trap of race based systems. You cannot use race as a basis for any decision without creating standards of race. You can't create such standards without creating a metric, and it will need terminology. In the bad old days, we had such a vocabulary: negro, half-caste, quadroon, etc. I am glad I don't have to teach my kids those terms, at least until they apply for college.

Dennymack on February 25, 2010 at 11:34 pm

Except that's also what the Indian Act is based on when it comes to determining who is a Status Indian and who isn't.

Marion on February 26, 2010 at 10:47 pm

I'm not aboriginal and I don't speak for the Mohawks.

This is really not about what's morally right, Xty, it's about what's practicable. Repealing the Indian Act may well be the right way to proceed, but right now First Nations are very much against it and we can't act unilaterally without really causing a huge crisis.

But if you defend the evictions, then you are defending banning mixed race marriages, at least on Mohawk land.
Why do you resort to threats? I was being neither personal or untrue, just trying to follow the logic of your arguments.

Xty on February 26, 2010 at 4:56 pm

Thank you Mark for drawing out what SOME people really think about Aboriginal people in this country and the manner in which you've organized your argument. I don't know if you've noticed, but the usual crowd of Macleans commenters don't represent a large part in this discussion.

haha yeah, good one, living on a reserve must be terrible. HAHAHAHAHAHA. You are hilarious, Mark.

Wait, that's not funny.

Dan on February 26, 2010 at 1:31 am

Kahnawake is not a reserve
It's a narco-state run by gangsters who extort protection money from the feds a.k.a. me

DT in GT on February 26, 2010 at 9:06 am

Yeah – when you live near it, you cannot escape that reality. It is a lawless zone.

Xty on February 26, 2010 at 5:20 pm

kahnawake is not unique. i used to live near a small town called beaverlodge, and the horse lake and kelly lake reserves accounted for about 80-90 percent of the crime in our whole area.

theintellectual on February 27, 2010 at 2:51 am

Quit withe apartheid rhetoric, you just make yourself look adsurd. If we'd allowed FN's to manage/get paid for the resources on their own lands we wouldn't now be in the position of them being virtual wards of state. This doesn't begin to address the historical injustices and oppression done to them in the name of Canada…for you it's all been a one way street…which just goes to show how truly ignorant you are.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 1:34 am

You may not be interested in your culture…does that give you the right to speak for others who may be?

i thought we weren't invited to this party…at least i didn't see the welcome mat.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:31 am

'That's why the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a worthless piece of junk—because (at least according to the Supreme Court of Canada) it both licenses the Canadian state to restrain your basic liberties yet also "

Oh dear Mark doesn't like section 35 entrenching Aboriginal rights in the charter…what a surprise? I love his succinct pithy dismissal of one of our founding peoples rights as "exempts your (native) neighbour from those same restraints" That's right Mark, they wrote it just to piss you off and yank the rest of our chains for past sins. But Mark's got a better idea…cept he never acually comes up with one…let's try assimilation, we just didn't stick at it long enough eh!

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:45 am

Indians didn't "found" anything. They are a recent addition to the lies of Canada created by the post war socialists.

Rob H on February 28, 2010 at 2:59 am

Sarcasm, because you don't have a valid point. I believe Mark's better idea is equal treatment under the law.

Xty on March 3, 2010 at 3:25 am

"A genuinely free society has to be free to say rude things to the morbidly obese or the Sapphically soused, because the price of smoothing out all the rough edges is a bureaucracy with powers ever vaster and ever more whimsical"

Yes i think i can agree with Mr Steyn on that score…lets roll up, or at least rein in the HRCs.
But the we get this…
'Real systemic provocations to “les valeurs d'inclusion”—whether on Mohawk reserves or in Montreal mosques—will be given a pass on cultural grounds, but the apparatchiks of ideological enforcements will pick on softer and softer targets, like Guy Earle, and destroy their lives'
So, do you want the commissars to cease and desist altogether, or only enforce their edicts where you think they ought to be?

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 2:56 am

It is clear from Mark Steyn's writing that he wants the HRC to cease and desist. But his point is valid – they are not only a real threat to freedom, they are also selective and pick on the weakest.

Xty on February 26, 2010 at 5:27 pm

If you can read, the "cease and desist altogether" is Steyn's positiion and he is correct.

I am just appreciative of Steyn for eloquently stating yet another reason us Neanderthals find the Junior Americans so cute and funny. Are there still men from Canada? Well yes, but they are either in the Middle East or on skates. Canadians are addicted to political correctness the way my brother was to booze. One day it cost him his home and he asked to move in; I told him to buzz off. Keep pushing your luck PC'ers. Boundaries are invaluable.

Awhhh…it's not all bad…the upside of universal health care is that even our street people are relatively healthy.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 10:19 am

Hm wonder if 'street' people and criminals get faster medical treatment then the rest of us waiting months and months on lists.
Street people tent to be younger and their medical needs are self inflicted and due to life on the street, life threatening or otherwise.
They also present the most energy sucking as they are 'hard' to deal with in any situation they are in, endlessly exhausing our emergency services for often nothing more than a self indulged bing of whatever the drug they are on, and usually in need of instant and or prolonged medical resources and attention.
They'll never be taxpayers or very few will.
You'll be seeing it differently when someone you love dies of cancer who had been placed on a 'waiting list' for nine months.

filter on February 28, 2010 at 7:01 pm

I am just appreciative of Steyn for eloquently stating yet another reason us Neanderthals find the Junior Americans so cute and funny. Are there still men from Canada? Well yes, but they are either in the Middle East or on skates. Canadians are addicted to political correctness the way my brother was to booze. One day it cost him his home and he asked to move in; I told him to buzz off. Keep pushing your luck PC'ers. Boundaries are invaluable.

As a note, in 2003 I was forced to "surrender to the Crown" a can of mace my wife kept in her car for protection. I'm still bitter about that. If you confiscate mace from women how do you plan on protecting yourselves? I've seen the police, please don't answer with that.

Hardly an accusation of racism, since i have no idea as to the ethnicity of the customs agent. More fairly a poke at yankee paternalism. I note that racism and it's adverse consequences for the "white race"is a perennial obsession of yours, not mine.

Delgamuukw was a very big deal on the reserve i lived on.[ it came in around the same time] Look at some of the prior rulings such as…forest ministries could hand out cutting rights on Fn's land as long as they left enough trees to enable hunting /trapping to continue. It was a joke. If we only really knew the half of how we robbed and swindled these people with a lawyers smile.

kcm on February 26, 2010 at 8:11 am

Of course there's dissent. The Mohawks are the most fractious and politics-addicted nation in the Americas. The reason you haven't heard about it is because you know nothing about them. Yet you feel happy commenting as though you knew something. What's new?

Damn you, Steyn! I'm was trying to read my way through a boring afternoon at work without getting busted. This article was too funny, though. I cracked up laughing and got the death stare from my German colleagues. Now i'm under pressure to work hard for the rest of the day. Damn you, Sir!

Kyle on February 26, 2010 at 10:36 am

"rights have that right" –> "whites have that right"

mitch on February 26, 2010 at 1:30 pm

Yeah, you're right, it does require more thought than you've put into it.

The treaties are treaties which aboriginal Canadians have signed, before they were officially considered Canadians (though retrospectively we now consider them to have Canadians) with the Crown as Canadians; they are not treaties with Canada, which includes both both the Crown and Canadians of all sorts.

Are Mohawks Canadian or not? You do need to clarify this point. Sovereign nation implies they are not.

Xty on February 26, 2010 at 4:50 pm

They are both Canadian and Mohawk. They are not less Mohawk because they are Canadian or less Canadian because they are Mohawk. The Mohawk are a semi-sovereign nation in that Canadian laws apply on Kahnawake but, in addition, the Band has a lot more authority than an ordinary municipality.

I am not defending the evictions at all, I am defending the Mohawks' right to make that kind of serious moral and political mistake. As Rumsfeld put it, Freedom is untidy. Moreover, we just don't, as a nation, have the political capital to start waltzing in and telling the Mohawks how to behave. They are not well-disposed towards us in the first place, they have a nearly unbroken 700-year warrior tradition (which now includes teeming arsenals), and they're prouder than the Highland Scots.

Sorry about the threat, there's been a lot of vicious personal attacks on this site in the past week (which you wouldn't know about) and they put in a new rule that you're not allowed to blacken your antagonist's reputation.

I thought the opening ceremonies were nicely done. Granted, that hydraulic arm didn't come down…but this was a nice ceremony. And, unlike China, no fake singing and fireworks! (Nikky Yanofsky is amazing.)

The issue with the Mohawk band[s] is interesting, especially given the fact that I look more 'naitive' than some of their very militant leaders. Will Shawn Brant get the boot, too?

Adam C. Sieracki on February 26, 2010 at 5:07 pm

We just wasted a whole bunch of Canadian taxpayers' money on the inane and insane Olympics. As for Aboriginal people…LOL. Come and live in Montreal and you will see how well they live off the white man' s bucks. Need smokes, go to the reservagion; need booze, go to the reservation; want to play poker, craps, the slot machines, go to the reservation. They suck taxpayers' money from the Federal Goverment while the rest of us have to live on what we earn. Outside of the few Indians who worked on high rise buildings in the U.S., the rest are lazy slobs.

Roslyn on February 26, 2010 at 6:18 pm

how ignorant of you. It is highly illogical to stereotype based on a few. I am First Nation (or as you say, Aboriginal). I pay taxes, live in the city, volunteer in community events/organizations, pay for all of my medical, dental, etc. For you to imply that I am a lazy slob because i am Aboriginal is completely racist.

Look in the mirror!

Racism_Sux on March 1, 2010 at 2:35 pm

Yeah, what a horrible comment.

Xty on March 2, 2010 at 10:36 pm

God bless you, Mr. Steyn for having the courage to say in public what so many of us think in private. By the way, wasn't it those same inhabitants of the Oka reserve near Montreal who would not let the Olympic torch relay come anywhere near until everyone got down on their knees and begged permission to step onto native land?

vancouver guy on February 26, 2010 at 6:30 pm

Wow… another ignorant person. You judge 1 millions Aboriginal people in Canada based on a few individuals in ONE community thousand of kilometres away from where you live.

Sounds like racism to me. You are just looking for excuse to hate.

Racism_Sux on March 1, 2010 at 2:37 pm

Also, I think my original point was simply that the Mohawk reservation kicking people out (which I do not condone) has absolutely nothing to do with the West Coast first nations. That would be like condemning the town of Timmins for the actions of the mayor of Trenton. Making the connection is quite ignorant (likely willfully) and indicative of Steyn's racism.

JonahH on February 27, 2010 at 11:22 am

I don't agree with the actions of this one, isolated Mohawk tribe. But it should really be acknowledged that this reservation has absolutely nothing to do with the west coast first nations. They are a different people with different beliefs. Lumping all indigenous peoples under one arbitrary umbrella is really quite ignorant.

The opening ceremonies were a national ceremony, showcasing Canada, not merely Vancouver or the west coast. I would imagine that the First Nations asked to participate in the OC were intended to represent Canada's First Nations in general (of course, I could be wrong).

To put it in perspective: This is why there has been criticism about the lack of French in the OC. Sure, they don't speak much French in BC. But this isn't only about BC. The OC represented Canada as a whole.

Mike514 on February 27, 2010 at 1:09 pm

"As of 2008, Arab citizens of Israel comprise just over 20% of the country's total population. The majority of these identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship." (Wiki – Arab Citizens of Israel)

Israel does have a history of denying citizenship based on race/religion. For example, the recent situation involving filippino residents of Israel . Also consider the "Right of Return" for Jews emmigrating to Israel, compared to the refusal of Israel to accept Gazan refugees. Israel may not be kicking out Arabs, but I'm pretty sure they're not letting any in. Even for Jews, some of the Orthodox Rabiis are trying to impose a sort of "purity test", disallowing conversions done by non-Orrthodox Rabbis in the diaspora.. Still, it may have been a hasty comparison on my part 'kcm' makes a very good point on this below.

JonahH on February 27, 2010 at 3:28 pm

Also, the situation within Israel proper is not the main thing: Israel has now been occupying the West Bank for 40 years and the West Bank Palestinians don't have citizenship. Indeed, what support a two-state solution has, either within Israel or internationally, is generally dependent on the idea that if the West Bank Palestinians got ordinary Israeli citizenship the Jewish character of Israel proper would disappear; so West Bank Palestinians' lack of citizenship is actually taken for granted.

Gee I wonder why the Israeli's are occupying the West Bank. Could it be they were shelled for 20 years from Syria? Could it be that Arabs want to kill all Jews in Israel? Gazan refugees! Gee how did they end up in Gaza? Were the Arab residents of Israel told by Arab armies to get out of Israel until Arab armies destroyed Israel in the 1967 war? West Bank Palestinians don't have citizenship because Israel has never claimed the West Bank, it is occupying it and has offered to leave if a peace deal recognizing Israel is agreed. BTW, what kind of visa did the filippino residents have?

No, it wouldn't be a good comparisan at all. The difference for the Mohawk would presumably be there aren't any more Mohawks anywhere else in the world, to ensure they continue to survive as a people. Somehow they;re going to have to figure this out. It's not acceptable in this age to deport or exclude people based on race or blood, whether they be Quebecers or aboriginals. But is a paradox, on the one hand nobody can in good conscience support racial separatism, on the other international and national law permits the right of self determination. How do you do that if you can't take measures to protect your minority culture?
Personally i think FN's have got to get realistic about band size. Form regional associations that are large enough to realistically protect the culture without trampling on the rights of the majority, or institute race quotas. Maybe assimilation is inevitable…everyone becoming Metis??… but they, not us, should get to decide when and how much to assimilate.

kcm on February 27, 2010 at 7:26 pm

Steyn isn't above double standards. Just ask him about Ronald Reagan and the Mujaheddin.

Adam C. Sieracki on February 27, 2010 at 2:59 pm

The First Nations represented in the OC were specifically the 4 BC tribes whose band leaders supported the games.

It should be noted however, that many of the indigenous peoples on whose (unconceded) land the olympics are taking place are vehemently opposed to the games.

I didn't like the ceremony too much either. But really, how do you do this without resorting to cliche? I'd imagine the next one in Sochi will be full of Cossacks and dancing bears. For Steyn this is just one more hook to hang his tiresome Trudeauopia narrative on…and a chance to herd all native opinion into the same leaky boat as the Mohawks…the fact is there is a diversity of native opinion out there on the issue of culture and how to defend it, the Mohawk in general seem to be at one extreme of it…Steyn's either too lazy or too smart to dig too deep. Complex nuance isthe enemy of oversimplfication for him, and why not when the latter is so much more effective.

kcm on February 27, 2010 at 7:03 pm

Mark, your incisive wit cuts through the PC BS once again! (Actually, I'm repeating myself…Political Correctness IS BS!!). I heard that that "person" pretend-flying over the Prairie wheat fields was actually a GIRL, not a BOY. I sure couldn't tell…which I guess means the organizers achieved ANOTHER wet-dream-fulfillment "equality" goal!!

My reaction to the OC was that every Canadian cliche was being trotted out and it was rather disconcerting that they couldn't come up anything more in depth about the geographical, historical and cultural diversity of Canada from aboriginal, French and English settlement to current times.

Basically, it was a pitch to tourism.

ibivi on February 28, 2010 at 6:54 am

Mr. Steyn! Natives in Canada are not the only ones discriminating. There are at least three subsidized apartment buildings in the city of Toronto you can not get into unless you belong to certain ethnic groups. This is being done quite openly without any fear of Human Rights Commissions.

zardas on February 28, 2010 at 11:53 am

Does Mark not know that there are plenty of grant worshippers in Ontario as well. Except that they don't use the word "grant" there. When Ontario, which gets the bulk of government handouts, received a handout, it's called an investment. LOL

LeRoy Peach on March 1, 2010 at 11:11 am

If anyone has followed Mark Steyn, these types of comments are not unexpected from him. While he certainly portrays an excellent example of the freedoms of speech, he also portrays en excellent example of hopelessly biased, unscientific diatribe.

The problem with both sides of this subject/argument is that people are oversimplifying the situation and painting a good vs bad, us vs them scenario, which is simply not true. Yes there are SOME Aboriginal people that are racist, but that IS NOT every Aboriginal person. Anyone to suggest such an ignorant thing is to be racist themselves.

At the same time, there are SOME caucasian people who are racist, but i am not so foolish and mentally illogical to categorically state that all caucasian people are racist. The fact is, people are complex beings who make individualistic choices. The actions of one CANNOT condemn the future or reputations of others.

Judging by the comments to this article, ignorance and racism seems to be bounding….

Racism_Sux on March 1, 2010 at 12:07 pm

It is hardly fair to accuse Mr Steyn of racism for pointing out the racist actions of the Mohawks.

Xty on March 2, 2010 at 10:50 pm

Racial profiling in Indian reservations?
Controlling comedy?
Taking people to court for upsetting minorities?
Oh, you Canadians live in heaven. I mean Nirvana, or the great
hunting grounds in the sky, or whatever…wouldn't want to upset
anyone about being left out, or upsetting spiritual sensibilities or…
not speaking French or…
Oh, fuck it, it's all just too difficult

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